Need to Know
by Amos Whirly
Summary: FBI Agent Renee Walker is frightened that she is becoming more and more like Jack Bauer, but she realizes that at the end of the day that might not be such a bad thing.


**Disclaimer:** This just hit me the other day, and I had to get it out before I did anything else. I don't know how good it is. I'm still experimenting in this universe. All characters in the following fanfiction belong to their respective owners. Not me.

**Need to Know  
**_by Amos Whirly_

I needed to know; that was why.

I needed to know that beneath the cold, callous exterior he showed everyone else, he still felt something.

We were on the street, singed and covered in blood. Marika was dead. Dubaku was dying, and Jack was on his feet, clear-headed enough to take command and put all the pieces together without breaking stride. No hesitation or reluctance. Like a machine—or a monster incapable of human feelings.

He just kept going.

It was a gut reaction, an emotional response to the stress and the shame and the guilt that threatened to snap me in two. I needed to know that he was human. That he could feel pain. That failure meant something—anything—to him. That watching the one he'd sworn to protect die in front of him tore him up on the inside. Like it tore _me _up.

Even as I said it, dragging his wife's memory out of her peaceful rest and throwing her death in his face as I stood in that hospital corridor, I knew it was selfish. I knew I was looking for comfort from someone who had no reason to comfort me. It was me lashing out, trying to find some reason to keep believing in him when at the moment he seemed worse than the people we were fighting.

I slapped him. Not once. Twice. It would have been three times if he hadn't stopped me. Looking back, I suppose he knew my heart was breaking, which was why he let me.

I didn't want to be a monster. I didn't want to be like him. But no matter how hard I fought it (Larry had pointed it out; Janis too), I knew I was, and it frightened me. And I needed to know that he was still a human being.

He walked away from me. Told me to quit if I couldn't take it. Mechanical and cold, uncaring about anyone or anything but his mission. I almost gave him up right then.

I'm glad I didn't.

Now, a few hours later, I'm standing in the White House. There are bodies everywhere, terrorist and civilian alike. And Jack Bauer, in his suit, is sitting on the floor, back against the doorjamb of the safe room where the President should have stayed. At his feet is the charred, broken body of Bill Buchannan. Jack's former boss. His ally. His friend. One of the only ones left.

In that single moment, I knew. In the shape of his shoulders, the droop of his head, and the way his fingers dangled at his knees, I knew. He was broken. He had been broken, probably since his wife had died, and the events of his life (which had seemed so distant and impersonal when enumerated in a personnel file) had only served to chip away at him piece by piece until nothing but the fractured shell I saw remained.

Yet, somehow, he kept fighting. He kept going. Because he could see the injustices of life, what was right and what was wrong, and even though he had every right to stop—he didn't. He cared more about the people of this country than he did about himself. He cared more about doing the right thing than focusing on the fact that no one in his life had done right by him.

That split second, I knew he was right. And at the same time I realized that I hadn't _needed_ to know it after all. He isn't human; he's Jack Bauer. And maybe if we hadlet him have free reign over the investigation from the start, all of this could have been avoided. But we didn't. And we're fortunate that he's still here—fighting for what's right again like he always seems to do.

At the end of this day, if people still say that I am acting like him, I won't see it as a bad thing. If people—Larry or Janis or anyone else—say that I'm following in his footsteps or that I'm turning into him, I won't argue. Because I could do a lot worse than to live my life the way Jack Bauer has lived his.

At the end of this day, I'll have no regrets. I will have done what I knew was right no matter what the cost. Just like Jack.


End file.
